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Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Lynne says she is a starving artist working hard to create fun, lovely and sometimes different artwork for your enjoyment.

Lynne promotes her work on Etsy, Zazzle and other inventive ways. Recently she joined an intrepid group of independent artists, ‘THE IndiExhibit’, who together participate in celebrity gift lounges at various Award Events.

Lynne Reichhart reached a point in her life when she felt it was time to explore her creative side. With the support of her husband Steve, Lynne created an art studio in their Upstate NY home and she now leads a happy, busy, creative life painting and marketing her art online

After embracing her creative journey, Lynne studied at the Munson-Williams-Proctor School of Art and at the Kirkland Art Center. She feels that having a better understanding of the fundamentals of art enables her to create better quality artworks. Lynne continues to study with an art professor, learning new techniques and pushing her artistic boundaries.

Inspiration for Lynne’s paintings is diverse. Objects or scenes draw her inexplicably to them. Each of Lynne’s paintings represents a journey through light and shadow, through perfection and deficiency, through truth and magic. Lynne goes beyond recording what she sees; she interprets, expresses and adds her creative spark to each image.

Lynne describes her style as representational. She loves to explore working with different subjects, mediums and surfaces. Her three top favorite mediums are acrylic, watercolor and colored pencil on canvas or paper. Lynne also paints on three dimensional objects such as tiles. Subject matter such as still life’s or close up floral images are most often painted in watercolor on paper. Lynne says that anything goes with acrylics. She prefers to work in smaller sizes that are more intimate and affordable for her collectors.

Besides original paintings and prints, Lynne also creates hand painted pendants, bookmarks, tile coasters, tee shirts, cards and many more fun items to give as gifts featuring her work. She just loves wearable art and other functional ways to offer her work. These items can be found in Lynne’s Etsy shop artbylmr

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

As long as she can remember, digital artist Carolyn Schiffhouer had an inner desire to express her creativity. Her artistic journey led her through a maze of mediums and techniques, from experimenting with fibre arts, to performing Celtic music for 7 years and finally to exploring the endless possibilities of digital graphic art.

INTO WINTER, Carolyn Schiffhouer

Carolyn became an ‘Etsian’ after observing that some of her cohorts at EBSQ were marketing their work there. Knowing she needed more outlets to market her beautiful work, she opened her Etsy shop MOON DANCE DESIGN. Her clientele generally find their way to her shop via word of mouth.

BARN WITH SKY, Carolyn Schiffhouer

The tools Carolyn uses are the computer, various types of digital software and her own photography. Some of the software she uses includes Photoshop, Painter, various types of Filter software and Apophysis.

Carolyn see’s the computer as the paint brush of the 21st century and feels that this medium will have the impact on the art world in this century that the camera, or the style of the Impressionists and Abstractionists had at the turn of the last century.

Inspiration for Carolyn’s amazing images comes from the world around her. In addition to the wonders she achieves with digital techniques, discovering Fractals opened Carolyn’s horizons further. Using her diverse tools, she layers images, filters colors and creates digital collages comprised of photos, fractals and effects to produce amazingly beautiful images with a somewhat surreal flavor.

AWASH IN FLOWERS, Carolyn Schiffhouer

Next up from Carolyn’s studio will be a group of cityscapes. She has amassed some great photographs of some beautiful cities and feels it is time to create a series. I’m looking forward to seeing this new collection!

PILLARS, Carolyn Schiffhouer

Carolyn’s advice for newbies to Etsy is to market, market, market! Being active in the Etsy community is a great way to be found.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Kate Lesko-Smith is a fibre and visual artist and I have had the pleasure of her friendship for the last 12 years. As a young girl, Kate began her journey with fibres & needles, fabrics and scissors. Over the years this talented lady has learned innumerable styles of fibre craft and designed and completed countless projects.

NOVEMBER CARD (flower of the month)

I met Kate when I juried her into my cooperative Artisans gallery in 1999 and we have worked together on various projects ever since. She has helped me improve my knitting skills over the years and I taught her how to work in clay.

MEDIEVAL LETTER

Kate’s primary inspiration is colour. She loves bright, rich saturated colours and uses them in all her projects with abandon. Other inspirations are Celtic and Mediaeval themes and unique embellishments. She loves to add fine sparkling filaments, beads, crystals, unusual buttons and other beautiful details to her work.

BEADED CHRISTMAS TREE

Kate’s Kards is the name of Kate’s Etsy shop. The shop features Kate’s hand painted, stitched, and beaded note cards. Current creative themes are based on nature and the four seasons. In the works right now is a new product line, Artist Trading Cards. Quite frequently Kate does special orders, customizing colours, threads, beads and other details for her customers.

BEADED SNOWMAN

Originally, Kate's cards were placed in local shops and galleries. Seeking more exposure and better sales figures, Kate looked on the internet for a place to sell her cards online and found Etsy. 2011 will bring Kate’s fourth anniversary on Etsy and the addition of her new Artist Trading Cards line.

WINTER PINE TREES

Kate enjoys interacting with customers from around the world and creating customized cards for them. She prefers the Etsy business model to placing her cards in shops because in shops the cards sometimes got damaged or stolen and she had to carry a large inventory.

STITCHED CHRISTMAS ANGEL

Kate also markets her designs at Kate’s Kards on Zazzle.com. The selection available is small but growing.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Biscotti Queen, known as Shannon Fogl to the rest of the world, baked with her grandmother for years and now passes on her Grammy's wonderful biscotti to you. Shannon started Biscotti Queen & Fogl’s Kitchen on Ebay and moved it to Etsy in May 2008. The move was inspired by friend Tracey Greene another Etsy seller.

Originally Shannon offered only baked goods, mainly Italian biscotti created from Grammy’s recipes, in her new Etsy shop. In 2009 jams, jellies and other types of preserves were added to the company’s offerings. All of Fogl's Kitchen's products are created from seasonal produce sourced from local family growers, and from the Fogl’s own small family farm. Due to this sustainable production practice, offerings from Biscotti Queen/Fogl's Kitchen vary with the seasonal availability of ingredients.

The selection of preserves created in Fogl’s Kitchen includes such well recognized favourites as organic Blueberry Syrup, Sweet Apple and Pear Jelly and Apple Butter. Biscotti Queen also offers such temptations as; Caramel Apple Preserves, which cause a stampede of reserve orders on facebook when the imminent creation of the preserves is announced; delicately flavored Lavender and White Clover floral jellies; Hot and Sweet Hot Pepper Jelly; fruit chutneys; sweet mixed fruit preserves; Peter Pecker Pickled Peppers; and a divine Rosemary glaze marinade.

APPLE BUTTER

Amongst the clientele of Fogl’s Kitchen/Biscotti Queen are families who are moving away from highly processed foods and GMO raised produce and looking for more organic alternatives. They want to support small family farms over large scale agriculture.

The Fogl’s live on a small one acre hobby farm, where they grow a lot of the produce used in the company’s products. This produce is raised organically and pesticide free. What they don't harvest on site is purchased from the local farms and farmers markets that the Fogl's support, and those farms and farmers also use healthy and sustainable farming practices.

LAVENDER FLORAL JELLY

Fogl’s uses many channels of networking outside of Etsy to help meet their customers. Shannon Fogl is on a mission and likes to be able to answer questions from anywhere, so she uses Twitter, Facebook, local farmers markets and a popular website called BackYardChickens.com

Shannon started marketing on Etsy because she found Etsy to be more personal and easier to network on than Ebay. Rather than being lost in a sea of listings, the company got their own shop, with easy access to forums, and to the blogs of other sellers, who work just as hard as Shannon does to bring people a product that isn’t mass produced. The company now feels it is a part of a community of sellers and buyers, not like it is lost in an over crowded bulk store.

Etsy has helped Fogl’s Kitchen to nearly triple their business annually. They find the Etsy site clean and streamlined, not over cluttered with ads or links that confuse the customer. This has made things very easy for new customers to come on the site, sign up and make a purchase quickly without confusion or long validation processes. The shop even gets a short store link, so it fits very nicely on Shannon Fogl's business cards.

Shannon thinks Etsy is a very savvy alternative to setting up and maintaining her own website for sales. The price is nice and making a listing is quick and simple. Shannon, the Biscotti Queen highly recommends giving Etsy a try.

BLACKBERRY JAM

I asked Shannon Fogl what advice she had for newbies just getting started on Etsy and here it is:

“Like any business you are responsible for marketing yourself. Etsy has some GREAT benefits to using their site to get you traffic,as long as you take advantage of the information.

Etsy has a 'treasury' feature that allows sellers and buyers to create groups of their favorite items from several sellers. These treasuries can become frontpage featured for meeting popular search terms, having gorgeous pictures and suggesting items that look very nice together. The team at Etsy make picks for the frontpage by choosing a treasury they think is worthy.

Take advantage and build treasuries of your favorite items when you can. Notify the sellers they were included, and a lot of the time they return the favor by including one of your items in a treasury they create. Being on the frontpage of Etsy is a fabulous way to get traffic and sales.

Also, read Etsy's blog, specificialy the 'sellers handbook' section. It is updated constantly with the popular search terms and word searches on their site. This is very handy for you, to know what searches are being used for popular items. You may find out that 'foxes' are in, and you will probably get increased traffic that month if you have anything to do with foxes in your shop. A popular search could be for weddings, if you have some pretty floral arrangements in your shop that will help draw traffic. Make sure you use all the terms you can to bring your item up in searches directly on Etsy. You get to choose 14 search terms in each listing to describe your item, don't waste them.http://www.etsy.com/storque/seller-handbook/

Etsy is very new age and all handmade. Unless you are offering great supply items, try not to list mass produced items, it is very frowned upon.

I also want to say it's nice to favorite or 'heart' a shop. Its a great way to network and make new friends. Building blocks for a good sale should never be passed by!"